Orchard wins awards and moves to Manchester

St John's Gardens to bear fruit

Manchester city centre is to have its first orchard in a couple of hundred years thanks to a new Manchester Garden City scheme aimed at making the city greener. The orchard, designed by gold-award winning RHS national young designer of the year, Daniela Coray, is to be given a permanent home in St John’s Gardens in Castlefield in Manchester city centre.

St John’s Gardens is one of the most beautiful green spaces in the city centre and this orchard will enhance it

The garden, called ‘A Stitch in Time Saves Nine’, is on show at this year’s RHS Flower Show at Tatton Park until 24 July.

The award-winning design includes 12 crab apple trees laid out on a grid similar to traditional rural orchards, making it easy to pick the fruit. Amongst the trees are wildflowers such as Viper's Bugloss, a biennial plant with violet blue flowers; Ox-Eye Daisies, a familiar native wildflower and Red Campion, a common spring-flowering plant found in woodland and meadows. Other plants featured in the garden include Good King Henry, also know as poor-man’s asparagus and perennial herbs Common Sorrel and Meadowsweet.

The entire garden will be transported 20 miles from Tatton Park to the new location off Lower Byrom Street in Manchester city centre. It will take three weeks to build and will be open later this summer. The work is jointly funded by Manchester City Council and CityCo.

Landscape architect, Daniela Coray, aged 26, who is originally from Virginia in the United States, and now living in Cornwall said: “This garden examines the issue of green space in urban areas so it’s great to be part of Manchester ’s Garden City project. To have it permanently on display in a city as significant as Manchester is fantastic and very fitting as we first built it just down the road. The garden is purposefully low maintenance and aims to provide the urban population with a respite from the concrete jungle.”

Daniela Coray Is In The Centre

Councillor Mike Amesbury, Manchester City Council’s Executive Member for Culture and Leisure, said: "St John’s Gardens is one of the most beautiful green spaces in the city centre and this orchard will enhance it even further. We’re rightly proud of our city’s parks and are committed to ensuring they provide pleasure for residents and visitors alike. The Manchester Garden City scheme is really beginning to take off. It’s a sustainable, important enterprise that will provide lasting benefits in the city centre for generations to come."

Councillor Pat Karney, Deputy Chair at CityCo, the city centre management company, said: “This initiative is our second Garden City initiative and follows the success of the first in Piccadilly Basin . This is the first time an orchard has been introduced into Manchester city centre so this collaboration with Daniela Coray is very exciting. It’s wonderful to be able to bring such a beautifully designed garden to one of our most important city centre green spaces. I’m sure it’ll bring a great deal of pleasure to people who visit St John’s Gardens for years to come. We are committed to delivering more Garden City schemes in the coming months and are looking to work with the RHS on further projects next year.”

Castlefield residents will adopt the garden and ensure its on-going maintenance and well-being.

Ali McGowan from the Castlefield Forum said: “St John’s Gardens is a lovely green space and the orchard will make it even better. We’re thrilled to have this beautiful show garden installed in our neighbourhood and we’re looking forward to spending time in it and taking care of it.”